InspoPosting

Magic systems are a personal passion, and unfortunatley, I don't really have enough projects to actually explore all the different ideas I have for magic systems. When I write an InspoPosting article about a magic system, I plan coming up with an example system, then essentially just running through all of the questions I pose in the Getting Started With Magic article. Then, onces it's fully fleshed out, I would explore different scenarios where the specific system may be able to be applied in ways that other systems might not.

Alternatively, I may also choose to explore a particular magical theme or genre of magic, and explore a variety of different ways that it could be implemented. For example, different forms of necromancy, dinivation, elemental control, etc.

The way that a government, or even just politics more broadly run, are pretty ingrained in most modern societies. Even the seemingly diverse range of government styles that exist in the world, are in reality are all pretty similar to one another. And further to that, a fantasy or sci-fi setting might even open up possibilities that simple aren't options in real life. Because of this, it can be especially helpful to get some exposure to extremely foreign concepts when it comes to what a country could look like, from a political perspective.

For example, in a fantasy world, you could have a magocracy, where the leadership is determined by magic prowess. This could lead in many directions. If magic has the possibility of extending life, it could result in an immortal council of godkings. If not, it may instead lead to regular subterfuge, to manipulate the appearance of others abilities, making yourself appear more powerful. Alternative to a society defines by magic, and possibly more mundane, there could be a world where nationstates are defined by their citizenry, not by geographical borders. Leading the complex legal enforcement in areas of high diversity.

My aim with these articles will be primarily to aid in breaking from the mold of traditional governance structures. Even if you're looking for something more standard (which, let's face it, is definitely the best choice the majority of the time) getting inspiration from some more extreme outlying examples, could still allow you to add a little bit of flavour to an otherwise familiar system.

These articles will focus on interesting different methods, mediums and styles of writing. A lot of these will probably make great exercises to write a short story with, though most probably won't be something you'd likely apply to all of your writing. That being said, they will almost certain give you something that will inform the way you write going forward.

For example, one topic I planning on covering, is writing with only dialogue. And I don't mean writing a manuscript in the style of a stage or screen play. No dialogue tags, no character names as labels. I have a novel that I'm working on which uses this concept for it's (very short) prologue. That being said, in a discussion with another writer, I explored some interesting ways in which you could actually use this for a longer form piece of content.

My main goal here is to really explore some more esoteric writing concepts and see how they could actually be implemented within a work.

This category is probably going to function quite similarly to how the magic systems InspoPosting articles will, where it's less about proof of concepts, and more focused on just providing fodder for the imaginations of other writers.

I'll present an example cosmology (which may or may not include gods) and explore the ramifications of a world or story set within it.

An interesting place I've seen a lot of writers get caught up on is how to actually outline the history of a setting. There are a lot of different approaches to this, and so I think it would be worth exploring some of those. I don't plan on necessarily coming up with specific historical events here, but instead looking at more vague, or abstract concepts surrounding setting histories, so that hopefully people can apply them to their own projects.

For example, looking at outlining the history of a setting based off of cultural trends, rather than key events. Or how focusing on the history of a specific nation, rather than world history can effect the outcome of your worldbuilding.

In line with magic systems and cosmology, this topic will likely focus on some specific example of fictional technologies, and looking at an implementation for them. Or alternatively, examining a broad category of technologies, and exploring how they can be implemented in different manners.

This could be something like all sorts of different ways to do teleporting. Or it could be a deeper dive into a specific implementation of body modding cybernetics.

My goal going forward it to do one of these InspoPosting articles per month, so look forward to checking some of these out, and I hope that they end up helping some of you in whatever endevours you're currently working on, or projects you may start because of them.